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What Google+ is Doing to Compete with Facebook

This year, along with the previous year’s social media winner Wikipedia, Google+ received a score of 78 from the American Customer Satisfaction survey. Alongside recent news reports of Google+ surpassing LinkedIn in monthly unique viewers, Facebook’s comparatively negative ACS score, and the Facebook stock taking a nosedive, Google+ is looking to make a huge power move in the eyes of the Internet.

As of late, Google+ has been making some additions to its product that have made its skeptics turn their heads, and their users applaud in appreciation. The new Google+ apps for both iphone and ipad function beautifully and are designed with both aesthetics and user experience in mind. The apps have received very positive scores. Simple, yet inventive design features, like having popular stories appear larger on the ipad app, have the users primarily concerned with a mobile experience interested in maybe trying out Google+. According to an article by the LA times, respondents credit this mobile edge and the absence of traditional ads as the two factors that gave Google the edge over its competitors.

In the same survey, Facebook received a 61; 16 points lower than Google+. With all the changes Facebook’s made in the past year (switching to Facebook Timeline, introducing frictionless sharing for its apps, incorporating ads and promoted posts, etc.) its dip in customer satisfaction may not come as a surprise. This week the company’s stock dropped to nearly $27 (close to its all-time low) experts say because of its decrease in user base from 158.9 million to 158.01 million. In short, Facebook is going through a rough time.

While Facebook’s visitors declined, Google+ continued its steady rise. Last month, Site Analytics reported close to 32 million unique visitors for the month of June. That’s up from 22 million the month before and 300,000 at this time last year. While the number doesn’t come close to matching Facebook’s 158 million, it does trump LinkedIn by 7 millions visitors.

Google+ is firing on all cylinders now, steadily gaining an impressive number of visitors and members, while keeping their customers happy with improvements and additions to their product. It’s going to take a lot to pry Facebook from the persistent fingers of the online world, but for those looking for an alternative, Google+ is only getting stronger.

Join The Conversation

It's obvious that Facebook is the most dominant social network by far, but I think it's interesting to see the changes they could make to better themselves; changes we can see happening with Google+. Google's social network is obviously late to the game (too late most people think) but the product they put out functions as well as, maybe even better than Facebook's. Right now it's hard to see the two products really competing with one another, but at some point doesn't Facebook need to recognize the improvements its competitors are making, how users respond to those improvements, and eventually learn from those strategies? That has to be thought of as competition in some way, no?